Cardelino wins more support for her work on limestone in self-consolidating concrete

Ph.D. student Natalia Cardelino

Natalia Cardelino is stacking up the support for her work this spring.

The second-year Ph.D. student has won a Daniel P. Jenny Fellowship from the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute for her research looking at the best way to use limestone cement in self-consolidating concrete.

“This is a great opportunity for me to combine elements of my past work experience with my current Ph.D. research interests,” said Cardelino, who returned to school after a decade working as an engineer. “This research will hopefully not only provide valuable [data] to the precast concrete industry but also advance studies on limestone blended cements.”

The fellowship for next academic year is the second bit of financial good news for Cardelino, who also received the Kuhlman Student Scholarship in January from the American Concrete Institute’s Georgia Chapter.

Cardelino studies with Professor Kimberly Kurtis. In her work, she’s evaluating how much limestone should be included in cement and how that impacts the resulting concrete.

“The project combines two emerging concrete technologies, self-consolidating concrete and limestone blended cements, with the intent of optimizing concrete mixes for use in the precast concrete industry,” Cardelino said. “I will be working with precast suppliers to investigate how varying amounts of limestone powder and powder fineness affects both short-term plastic concrete properties and long-term hardened concrete properties.”

As part of the fellowship, PCI will highlight Cardelino’s work in the group’s journal. She’ll also received feedback and advice on her project from a group of industry advisers.